He
coined the term “Pop Art,” worked together with Marcel Duchamp, and
never shrank from exploring political themes. Richard Hamilton, many of
whose works are part of the Deutsche Bank Collection, is considered to
be one of the most important British artists of the 20th century. Three
years after his death, two London institutions, the Tate Modern and the
ICA, are celebrating his work. Eddy Frankel on an artist whose
influence on younger generations can’t be stressed enough.

It's an unassuming image—busy, conflicted, almost cluttered. Richard Hamilton'sJust What is it that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?
(1956) makes its point quietly, but aggressively, with an assault of
advertising imagery, consumer goods, and luxury homeware. At first
glance, it's hard to imagine that this work would become the defining
image of a generation, that a whole movement would bloom from the seeds
this collage planted.

But it's safe to say that Hamilton's most iconic image was one of the first steps towards forming what we've come to know as Pop Art. It is in his footsteps that greats like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein
would walk—two names that have proved to be box office gold over the
past couple of years, as museums have seen a huge resurgence in
interest in Pop. Internationally at major institutions like the Tate, the Barbican, and The Whitney Museum of Art, Pop shows have been nothing short of blockbusters. Last year's Lichtenstein exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago
was their most successful show in a decade, before it traveled to the
Tate Modern and smashed records there as well. It's a bubble that
doesn't look set to burst any time soon, with even more Pop shows set
to take place across the globe in 2014.

But Hamilton and his
formative role in the evolution of Pop—though widely acknowledged in
academic circles—hasn't received the public attention of his more
successful American contemporaries. That looks like it’s about to
change, as the Tate launches a major retrospective of the British
artist's work in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art, who are showing two of his 1950s installations.

It's
apt that the ICA should play a role in reintroducing him to the
art-loving public. It was here that Hamilton would take part in the
first Independent Group meetings with artists and academics like Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull, and John McHale.
The garish American advertising imagery that Paolozzi projected at that
first meeting would introduce Hamilton to the idea of using the mass
market as source material for his own art. The artists gathered there
helped shape a definition of Pop based around ideas of consumerism,
celebrity, and popular culture. When they announced themselves to the
world with their participation in the seminal This is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery
in 1956 (where Hamilton's iconic collage, with the word “pop”
prominently emblazoned on the bodybuilder's lollypop, was first shown),
their brash, immediate aesthetic sent shockwaves through the art world.

Pinpointing
the more exact origins of the movement is a tricky task. Varying
sources attribute the coining of the term to either McHale, Paolozzi,
or Hamilton. Mark Godfrey,
the curator of the Tate’s retrospective, argues that we have Hamilton
alone to thank. “Hamilton wrote a letter to the architects Alison and Peter Smithson
in January 1957 where he detailed the criteria for what Pop Art is. He
wrote a list, saying that it was popular, transient, young,
mass-produced, sexy, big business, low cost, expendable, witty,
glamorous. They were his definition of Pop Art, and he coined the term.
Of course the word appeared in his collage the year before and I’d
imagine the word was discussed among the members of the Independent Group, but it was that letter to the Smithsons that really coined the term.”

Hamilton
managed to embody many of the ideas he listed simply by elevating
design to the level of fine art—an idea inspired by the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp, one of Hamilton's great heroes and friends. The vacuum cleaner, TV set, tape recorder and tinned ham of Just What is it that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? are
no different to any other pictorial element in the work. This idea of
design as beauty—of ready-made, mass-produced art—is at its clearest in
Toaster (1967) from the Deutsche Bank Collection,
a single image of a Braun kitchen appliance accompanied by words
compiled from Braun press material. His admiration for Braun's chief
designer Dieter Rams is obvious and echoes Duchamp playing with the commercial origins of the urinal in his infamous Fountain
(1917), but what's most striking about the image is how direct it is in
appropriating commercial material for artistic purposes. Hamilton saw
no reason that we shouldn't find the same beauty in commercial products
that we do in work intended for galleries, an idea that would similarly
shape the careers of Warhol, Lichtenstein, and any number of successful
artists since.

But don’t think for a second that Hamilton
blindly embraced consumerism; there’s a hint of satire in his work. “He
doesn’t buy into the values of consumer capitalism totally, because
there’s this leftist position in much of his political work,” Godfrey
says. “So he’s very much appreciative of the new objects of consumer
culture, but not just blandly affirmatory.”

Though the political
edge would come later in his career, it's the wide variety of
Hamilton's work that makes him so interesting. From the early collages
through to his iconic depiction of his friend Mick Jagger's arrest in Swingeing London
67 (1967) and then his later painting work, Hamilton was a ceaseless
experimenter. Godfrey sees this as an intrinsic part of Hamilton's
appeal: “there's an interest in him because he is an artist who can
move in such complex ways between works about things like design
products and works that deal with serious political issues, like the
Irish Troubles or Tony Blair's war in Iraq.” Godfrey's point is an
important one: Hamilton was never one to rest on his laurels.

This
restlessness is something that may have been inspired by his idol,
Duchamp. Hamilton became friends with the great French modernist in the
1960s, gaining Duchamp’s permission to create copies of his vitrine
work, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (1915-23),
to allow it to travel. The signed version at the Tate Modern is, in
fact, a Hamilton copy. It's an idea that would come full circle, as
Hamilton's own collages would themselves become fragile over time—the
original Just What is it... remains on the walls of the Kunsthalle Tübingen
in Germany, while the one on display in the retrospective is, once
again, a copy. This slipperiness of authorship, the copying and the
appropriation, is a defining characteristic not only of Hamilton's
work, but of Pop in general.

Hamilton would go on to court controversy by depicting the Northern Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands in The Citizen
(1980-83) at a time of great political strife in the UK. His
willingness to confront difficult issues made him something of a
maverick figure in British art at the time. But he continued to
shape-shift, to change direction. He would continually paint and draw,
as can be seen in the Deutsche Bank's beautiful and subtle Soft Blue Landscape (1980) or his very early Three Studies of Bloom
(1949). “The message of the show,” says Godfrey, “is that Pop is just
one chapter amongst many interesting and important other chapters in
his life.”

Considering that he was an artist of such clear
importance and prominence, can you spot an unequivocal, obvious
influence from Hamilton on the likes of Jordan Wolfson, Laure Prouvost, or even Damien Hirst?
Probably not. But what you can do is trace a direct line from his work
to the output of contemporary artists—though the influence may not be
clear, Hamilton acts as an ancestor, a sort of revolutionary father
figure who paved the way and knocked down barriers for today’s artists.
His work opened up the art world to ideas of appropriation and
consumerism that would come to define the shape of much contemporary
art practice. “I see his influence in different places, in the
photography of Christopher Williams, the work of Mark Leckey and his approach to display, or Jeremy Deller in his pavilion at the Venice Biennale and in taking up a tough political stance. Others will be drawn to his involvement with fashion or Roxy Music
[Hamilton taught singer Bryan Ferry at university], or his use of
Polaroid photography. The work is rich because it has different things
that younger figures can draw from.” Again, it's Hamilton's diversity
that seems to hold the key to his appeal. He was far from a one-trick
pop pony.

The two major London shows—and the smaller gallery exhibitions at places like the Alan Cristea Gallery
that are taking place simultaneously—will be the first chance viewers
will have to see all sides of his work together in one place. That it
has taken until now for us to have a proper in-depth look at Hamilton's
oeuvre should tell you how long overdue this retrospective is.